Live Like Legends (LIVING LEGEND #3)

Chapter 33

TWO WEEKS LATER

I gave tight smiles to the sentries as we left for the day and to say I was tired was a fucking understatement. Ariel had decided that I’d had enough adventure, so mundane tasks for hours on end would be how I spent my time. One of those excruciating things being moving everything he’d set up for his induction ceremony from inside the grand hall to outside in the courtyard.

I’d widened my eyes, barely holding back the words I’d wanted to spew at him for seriously planning to go through with this whole ordeal. Surprisingly, when Ariel wasn’t looking, I wasn’t being shunned by my peers. They didn’t quite understand my affection for the pretty hybrid stowed away in my room, but they chose not to question me about it.

Their constant inquiries about Hell ceased the moment Morgan would show up and inspect how things were going. I hated playing nice like this, especially towards those that didn’t deserve it.

I headed down the hallway of The Skies, hearing chatter about all the changes Ariel was planning to make to this place. Each idea was more absurd than the next and I stopped listening to the gossip after a while. I opened my door and found Dani perched on my desk, running her hand down the leather-bound notebook Natalia had handed back to me before we left my house.

She looked up at me, her brown eyes soft and welcoming. Her curls were slung over one of her shoulders and she looked comfortable in one of my shirts. I leaned back against my closed door and stared at her. It was partly in what I now liked to call obsessively-loving adoration, but it was also in contemplation. The bruises on her face had healed and the swelling around her eye was less intense.

Dani sighed, holding the book up. “You plan to do something with this soon?”

I bit my bottom lip. “Maybe. Natalia said that she could feel some sort of magic in it, but it wasn’t her place to mess with high executive magic, even in death. Or maybe she said especially in death. It was one of the two.”

She nodded, slowly, placing the book down next to her. “I suggest keeping it with you, since you know, Ariel might have a means to raid your room randomly.”

I let out a small laugh, rubbing my neck and feeling a knot.

Dani noticed the way I winced when I tried to release the tension. “I told you to stop sleeping on the floor.”

“We’ve been over this.” I walked over to the bathroom, picking up one of the glass jars that Xander had given us. It had a silvery gel in it that Dani had been using on her wounds. He wasn’t lying about how fast they would heal up, but the scars were still sensitive.

I unscrewed the top and heard her huff out a breath. I scrunched up my face. “He said twice a day, Dani.”

I sat in my desk chair and grabbed her leg. I pushed the shirt up, exposing her thigh and the three decently large gash wounds. My heart constricted each and every time they were in my eyesight. I placed the jar on my desk and dipped my fingers inside, feeling the cool texture of the gel. It sparkled slightly, but I knew that would go away the minute it was rubbed into her skin.

I gently started smearing it on her scars and I noticed her thigh tense up. It wasn’t the kind of tensing that told me it hurt, but the kind that had me thinking that Dimitri’s torture wasn’t too far from her mind. I eased the gel into her skin, seeing the way she tried to look casual, but her mouth would twitch as if she was holding something back. In a flash, she pulled away from me.

“Okay, I think that’s enough.” She put one of her curls behind her ear, grabbing the jar and scooting over. She started to spread some of the gel over the scars at her arm.

The burn at her neck had subsided tremendously, but there were moments when she would turn a certain way and it was like I could see a shadow of where his hand had been. I wiped my hands down my pants, watching her carefully. “And this is why I sleep on the floor.”

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m trying , Dani. I want you to feel comfortable and the first night we slept in my bed since you’ve been back, you nearly jumped from under the covers cause my leg grazed your thigh.”

“You ever think maybe it just hurt or something.” She wasn’t even looking at me. She put the cap back on the jar, tapping her fingernails on the lid.

“Sure, maybe. Did it?” I got up from the chair and stepped between her legs. She didn’t answer me, so I continued to speak. “I want to be selfish, okay. I want to be in bed with you, holding you and crushing you against my body so tight you can’t disappear again. I want to kiss every single inch of you until what happened is something you can’t even waste time remembering, but I know you work on your time and that’s okay. I’m the last person who should ever force you to be okay when you aren’t.” I delicately reached my hand up, brushing my knuckles against her cheek. I heard her breath catch the minute my skin connected with hers, but she let out a long exhale when I didn’t move and just let her relax.

She reached for my hand, bringing it away from her face so she could kiss my knuckles. “Nick, what happened with Dimitri…”

I shook my head. “This isn’t me asking you to tell me what happened while you were locked away…”

She kissed my knuckles again, one by one. “I know.”

I took a deep breath in. “So, what were you saying?”

She looked confused. “What was I saying when?”

“Before. You were about to say something involving Dimitri and then I cut you off.”

Her mouth formed into an O and she stuck her tongue out to lick at her bottom lip. She looked as if she was thinking, like she’d had something else on her mind but now she was reevaluating. “Uh, what happened with Dimitri was awful but don’t pity me or the scars he left me with. I still have my light and my dark powers; I can still fight the same. A million creatures end up there and don’t ever get out so everyone should just save their pity for them.” She clucked her tongue, leaning back on her hands.

I tilted my head to the side, trying to piece her words apart. “I don’t pity you, Dani. I know you would fucking hate that. Do I wish the guy was alive and here right now so I could beat his face in all over again, well yeah. As for your scars, if you honestly think something like that makes me want you any less, then you don’t know me at all.” I let my voice get low, whispering, “existing with all the scars, remember.”

Her lips twitched into a small smile, but it was a smile that wasn’t planning on staying for long. I pointed to the floor. “I’ll sleep on the floor until you give me an okay. Not chastising me for sleeping there but telling me that having me back in bed with you is what you want .” I walked back up to her, placing both my hands on either side of her legs. “The moment you do, the minute you say okay and lean into my every touch, then I’ll make you understand that I will never stop wanting you.”

Dani placed one of her hands over mine, worrying her bottom lip as if she was fighting against herself with whatever else she wanted to say. “Nick, it’s not…”

I waited for her next words, but a knock at my door caused us both to jump.

“Yeah?” I called, listening for a response.

“You called me here to babysit,” Reese answered, saying babysit like there could have been a better word for him to use, but he didn’t.

Dani cocked her head to the side, raising one of her eyebrows. “Babysit?”

I ran a hand down my face, turning to head to my door. I opened it, seeing him leaning against the threshold. I gave him a pointed look.

“What?” he asked, completely unaware.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing.” I spun around to look at Dani who was already holding Jonah’s notebook. “I’m heading to Natalia’s and then my dad’s. Ariels had me running around so much, I haven’t had a chance to really sit down with them. I would take you with me…”

Reese clucked his tongue. “Lockdown, hence the babysitting. Nicholas here, didn’t want any of Ariel’s little bitches to bother you.”

Dani laughed and it was a nice sound to hear despite everything else. “I can handle Ariel’s little bitches, including the head bitch himself, okay.” She shoved the notebook at me.

“Is that Jonah’s initials?” Reese asked, craning his neck to get a better look. “Wait, that's the book with the Jonah high executive magic stuff or whatever?” He said it so simply like this notebook couldn’t just rip away everything Ariel was trying to steal. I had told Reese pieces here and there, wanting to keep him the loop as much as I could. He was more interested in the part where Ariel got kicked off his self-made pedestal and less on how it happened.

“Something like that, yes. Maybe exactly like that.” I patted him on the shoulder and walked around him. I leaned down and gave Dani a quick kiss. I wanted more than that, I wanted a deeper kiss that she was dizzy from, but I could wait. “I’ll be back.”

I didn’t like leaving her, but I also didn’t want to coddle her. That was our problem last time she was confined to my room.

Reese saluted me and jumped up on my bed, scooting back so he could prop his back up against the wall. Before I walked out, I thought about what that meant leaving those two alone together. I was about to turn around and go to Oculus another time, but then I heard, “Are you wearing pants under that shirt?”

Dani’s laugh vibrated through my core. “Yes, you idiot, well—shorts.”

“Oh thank fuck, I did not want to have to keep my eyes closed the entire time.”

I chuckled to myself, thinking that maybe he was exactly the right person for this job.